Exploring the socialized operations of manufacturing resources for service flexibility and autonomy

Servitization is an important approach to integrate the value chain through product lifecycle and to reenergize the manufacturing industry. In this regard, a large number of service models and cloud-based platforms have been put forward in the last decades. However, with the geometric growth in the manufacturing data, the traditional cloud-based architecture is becoming less effective for manufacturers, making it harder to manage the resources precisely and timely. In this research, the personification and socialized operations of manufacturing resources were initially studied so that they can manage their “social circles” and look for workmates and backups as insurance to unexpected situations. Specifically, an overall framework for the socialized manufacturing services was proposed that established an artificial social network for manufacturing resources. In this framework, the resources and services were virtually modeled using finite state machines and trie-based peer-to-peer networks. A dynamic capability network was formed where the adding, searching, and updating of services were defined. In addition, the collaboration and substitution of services were mathematically described to implement the proposed methods in the real-world manufacturing environment. The framework was demonstrated using a simulated production line, which showed the feasibility of resource socialization. This research has brought the early designs of the resource-oriented social network and provided a possible solution to promote the autonomy and flexibility of manufacturing systems.